This invention relates to a basket adapted to be stacked in or on top of another substantially identical basket with a bottom and side walls.
Great requirements are put on the containers, baskets and crates in which filled and empty bottles and the like are conveyed. For instance, the walls of the crates shall be as vertical as possible so that the relative movements between the bottles will be as small as possible. Hitherto such crates have been made of wood and lately also of plastic. These prior art crates are costly because of the material from which they are made, and they also suffer from the great drawback that they cannot be stacked in each other in the empty state, from which problems of transportation and storage have resulted.
Others have heretofore sought, with varying degrees of success, to provide baskets that selectively nest (stack within) or stack on each other. In such prior devices the various inventors have perceived a need for certain features, but none have created the combinations that are disclosed herein. Thus, while patents, such as U.S. Pat. No. 2,252,964 disclose the utility of vertical sides over tapering sides, movable means may be needed to transform such baskets from a nesting condition to a stacking condition. While patent U.S. Pat. No. 2,931,535 discloses utility of inclined parallel wire members in side walls having inter-engaging shoulders and feet at the ends thereof, such baskets are required to be shifted and offset horizontally in order to effect nesting. While patents, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,252,964, 2,964,211, 3,481,507 and 3,622,031 disclose utility in rotating the baskets, from a position where multiple baskets appear identically, about a vertical axis by 90.degree. or 180.degree. to effect stacking rather than nesting, such constructions normally utilize inclined wall elements and other wall parts to abut by interference or be telescoping into each other, thereby risking the jamming together of elements that could interfere with the ability to separate nested baskets.